


The Light

by freyathedark



Series: Creepy One-Shots [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Creepy, Horror, Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 18:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17027529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyathedark/pseuds/freyathedark
Summary: When it happened, it happened at night.





	The Light

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to The Magnus Archives podcast for being excellent fodder for my horror writing self.

It showed up at night.  I mean, of course it did, that's how it goes in the horror stories, but you never think something that cliche would actually happen.

I was driving home when I saw it.  I didn't know what it was, and I still don't.  I don't think anyone does.  It was just this light, over a tree.  Not anything bright, just a soft glow, like an orange moon, or a billboard seen far away.  And then it got closer.  And it definitely wasn't a moon.  It looked like a tornado, impossibly tall and with that spinning shape and unrelenting movement you see on TV.  But there wasn't any wind.  Absolutely no wind, anywhere.  And it didn't destroy anything, just passed over trees and houses and a few offices.  I remember watching it, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did.  I looked over at the stopped cars next to me, but the drivers looked just as confused as I did.

After it had passed by and was out of sight, we all just... went about our business.  I mean, what else could we do?  I doubt any emergency service in the world could do anything about it.  It wasn't until the next day you really noticed anything different.  Even then, it was subtle.  It was easier to notice when you were right on the line between the path of the light and everything else.  Things moving just a little out of time with the wind.  Light falling strangely through a tree, or making the road look weirdly textured.  The kind of thing it's easy to dismiss, because looking at it all together just doesn't make sense.  The people, on the other hand...

The light had passed right through town, right over a lot of houses.  The next morning, after the light was gone, things went on as normal.  But you could kind of tell who had been in the path.  They looked just a little off, eyes too bright and mouths too wide.  They talked just a little too quickly and a little too quietly and with a strange cadence that didn't sound like anything else.  They acted normal, though, aside from that.  Except... they never mentioned the light, acted like they had no idea what anyone was talking about, and if you pushed them about it, they would just walk away.  It made things hard at work for a while, because of course that was what everyone wanted to talk about, and a few of my coworkers had been right in the path, so of course we were asking questions.  In the end, we just didn't talk about it around them.

It was only a few nights later that the light made the news.  It would show up at night, lowering to the ground as the sun set, and travel in a straight line until dawn.  People would record it, but it showed up weirdly on the screen, always looking like bad CGI.  I know scientists must have been itching to study it, but I don't remember ever hearing about experiments or results.  You couldn't even find anything online but conspiracy theories and amateur videos.

Maybe we could have ignored it, just let it become normal, if not for what happened.  By that point, it had been seen on every continent but Antarctica (and you can't really be sure there), and its path had been mapped out to the point where the local news would be forecasting the path to alert people in the way.  That night was the first time the light would cross its own path.  I don't think anyone really expected anything to happen.  I mean, I didn't, to be sure, but I'm not an expert by any stretch.

I saw the footage on YouTube, like millions of other people.  Someone had set up across the street with their cell phone and recorded the whole thing.  They got a perfect angle of the light approaching the edge of its old path, then crossing it, and the picture just got...

Everyone agrees that it's wrong, but no one can explain why.  The video looks normal, sounds normal, but looking at that section for too long gives you a headache.  People who live near an overlap talk about nosebleeds, migraines, vertigo, all sorts of things happening when they look at it.  But not the people who the light already passed over.

And no one goes into an overlap.  We learned that from YouTube too, before those videos were taken down.  I still can hear the screams, but I can't remember what I saw.

It's probably for the best.

I know most of this you'll already know, but I wanted to write down my point of view before tonight.  There's a blizzard where I am, and I can't get out of the light's path in time.  There's nothing I can do but go to sleep.

I hope I'm still me when I wake up.


End file.
